In Egypt, the price of bread is up 35% and cooking oil 26%, and the government recently proposed ending food subsidies. The plan has produced revolutionary developments. ‘A revolution of the hungry is in the offing,’ said Mohammed el-Askalani of Citizens Against the High Cost of Living, a group established to campaign against the ending of subsidies.

Workers in Sri Lanka are now going hungry along with their families, after a doubling of the price of their staple rice diet. Many Sri Lankan workers cannot now afford rice, and a major clash with the Rajapaksa military dictatorship is on the way.

In the EU, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Slovenia’s capital on Saturday to denounce low pay and corporate greed across Europe as politicians and central bankers called for wage cutting to combat inflation.

These are the same politicians and central banks that are handing out tens and even hundreds of billions to the bankers, whose anarchic practices have been at the root of the inflationary phenomenon. At a time of surging food and energy prices worldwide, the European Trade Union Confederation organised the demonstration, describing it as a show of anger and determination to improve on the ‘poverty wages’ of more than 30 million workers across the Continent.